Nearly Three Million African Americans Are Currently Enrolled in Higher Education

New data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that in 2009, the latest year for which complete statistics are available, there were 2,919,800 black Americans enrolled in degree-granting institutions of higher education. This is a whopping increase of 13 percent from 2008. Perhaps the economic recession caused more African Americans to stay in school rather than enter the job market where there were limited chances of employment, particularly for African Americans.

In 2009, blacks were 14.3 percent of all students enrolled in American higher education. This was up from 13.5 percent in 2008. In the year 2000, blacks were 11.3 percent of all enrolled students.

In 2009 there were 1,882,700 black women enrolled in American higher education. They made up 64.5 percent of all African-American enrollments. This was down slightly from 64.7 percent in 2008.

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